SPANISH FORT, Alabama -- The attorney for an asphalt businessman appealing a variance denial filed a motion in Baldwin Circuit Court this month requesting that the Spanish Fort Board of Adjustment be ordered to enter mediation, court documents show.

The civil action filed Nov. 18 by John L. Lawler on behalf of Charles Renfroe, owner of Asphalt Services Inc. on Old. U.S. 31, further asked that the case, scheduled for a jury trial in February, be delayed until May.

Mediation will allow both parties to resolve the matter before incurring the expenses of trial preparation, Lawler said in his motion.

The appeal in civil court revolves around Renfroe’s attempts to receive a variance from Spanish Fort officials to allow him to use his property in a commerce park to store materials for his contracting business.

After months of consideration and delays, the City Council in April rejected a request to change the zoning from B-3 general business to M-1 light industrial to allow materials storage. Renfroe had been using the portion of the property that is in the city limits for that purpose though the B-3 zoning doesn’t allow it, according to city officials. In June, the Board of Adjustment denied Renfroe’s appeal of the City Council’s rejection.

City dealing with other suits

The suit is one of a handful of pending cases city officials are dealing with. Spanish Fort is also preparing to defend itself against two cases related to the erosion of unstable bluffs, said city attorney David Conner. As of Monday, no hearing date had been set for one of the cases while a status hearing for the other is scheduled in February, court records show. Both cases also name the Baldwin County Commission as codefendants, according to Conner and court records.

In another case, the city filed suit early this spring against the developer and various contractors over stormwater drainage problems in the Westminster Gates Phase I subdivision. City leaders hope to recover money spent on emergency drainage repairs. A status hearing on this case is also set in February, according to court documents.

Another suit against the city involving Sinking Ship LLC and its proposed trailer park was resolved earlier this fall, according to Mayor Joe Bonner.

The mayor said the city has been fortunate regarding the number of lawsuits.

"Past administrations have kept us off the hook," he said last month. "There’s nothing the city is holding back on involving a lawsuit that has possibilities of putting us in a financially precarious situation."

The pending litigation represents the highest number of cases that the city has dealt with at one time, according to the city attorney.

"We’ve been very blessed over the years," Conner said last week. Despite the unusual caseload, Conner said he does not believe the suits are the result of anything the city is doing wrong.

"I just think that’s just part of standard operations," he said. "At some point in time, you’ll eventually have someone that will attempt to make a claim against you for actions that you take. For a city our size and the type of business that we do, this is not an unusually high number of cases. And if you spread it out over the life of the city, we’ve had very few lawsuits filed against the city."

The city was incorporated July 19, 1993.

The mayor previously said that the city’s 2010-11 budget, passed in October, includes a slight increase for some attorney’s fees.

But the city attorney last week said that, with exception of the city’s suit against the Westminster Gates subdivision, the other cases are being handled by insurance lawyers. Because insurance companies are paying for the defense in those cases, they are not sapping money from city’s budget, Conner said.